Issue_47
29 articles-
What Trump’s Simplified Language Means
On the last weekend in April, I was surprised that a panel called “The Press and President Trump,” held at the Columbia Journalism School, didn’t broach the subject of mental illness. Just over a week earlier, at a psychiatry conference at Yale, a group of the attendees announced that Trump has a “dangerous mental illness.” […] -
Stop Saying the Brain Learns By Rewiring Itself
Most neuroscientists accept that the brain computes by modifying its synapses, the links between neurons. On this view, the brain learns because experience molds it, rather than because experience implants facts. But experience does implant facts. We all know this, because we retrieve and make use of them throughout the day.Illustration by Gary Waters / […] -
How the Tension Between Mercy and Blame Shaped Our Legal Codes
When we make moral judgments, says Fiery Cushman, the lead researcher at Harvard’s Moral Psychology Lab, the “more primitive, so to speak ‘you caused it, you should suffer’ response never goes away.”“The Barque of Dante,” by Eugène Delacroix (1822) One day in July 1884, four shipwrecked men aboard a lifeboat headed northwest off the Cape […] -
God Created Consciousness in Fiction
Given his grandeur, pettiness, and complexity, and his capacity for introspection, he’s the major exception to the flatness of ancient characters—God.Illustration by Humphrey King / Flickr Many modern novels do something that the earliest literature sometimes seems incapable of doing—representing the inner life of the individual, in all its complexity. The history of literature has […] -
Pre-Conscious Humans May Have Been Like the Borg
Does an alien race from Star Trek tell the story of human consciousness?
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Roger Penrose On Why Consciousness Does Not Compute
The emperor of physics defends his controversial theory of mind.
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A Theory of Consciousness Can Help Build a Theory of Everything
Neuroscience is weighing in on physics’ biggest questions.
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Is Quantum Theory About Reality or What We Know?
Physicists know how to use quantum theory—your phone and computer give plenty of evidence of that. But knowing how to use it is a far cry from fully understanding the world the theory describes—or even what the various mathematical devices scientists use in the theory are supposed to mean. One such mathematical object, whose status […]
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How to Solve Oncology’s Labor Crisis
Cancer doctors are overworked, retire early, and attract fewer recruits than other specialties, leaving the rising cancer-patient population vulnerable. Here’s what must be done.Photograph by Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy / Getty Images I watched a man die today. We were “rounding” when we were summoned to his room. He was struggling to breathe, […]
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Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?
Literature’s evolution has reflected and spurred the growing complexity of society.
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If Bugs Are Sentient, Should We Eat Them?
The ethics of eating insects. -
We Need Conscious Robots
How introspection and imagination make robots better. -
Color Is a Dance Between Your Brain and the World
When Robbert Dijkgraaf was a little boy, growing up in the Netherlands, he’d play in his home attic after school, often with a friend. It was dark inside except for the light streaming in from one window. One time, they closed the shades so only a sliver of photons could pass through. Robbert, holding a […] -
Why Poverty Is Like a Disease
Emerging science is putting the lie to American meritocracy. -
The Kekulé Problem
Where did language come from?
